Players trying to access these digital PS3 and Vita games are getting “expired” error messages

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Classic video game fans are reporting that they’ve recently been unable to re-download games they’d already purchased from the PS3 and PS Vita online stores.

As first noted by Kotaku (opens in new tab), some players who had bought digital copies of older titles like Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger have booted their games only to receive a message informing them that the purchase they’d made had expired on December 31, 1969. 

That’s not just decades before the games were released, but likely years before the developers who made them were born, too.

So did @PlayStation expire the PSOne Classics versions of #ChronoCross and #ChronoTrigger by setting the date on new downloads to 12/31/1969? This is preventing me from playing my purchased copies on Vita and PS3. @ModernVintageG @dark1x pic.twitter.com/wxRebNIZWhApril 8, 2022

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“So did PlayStation expire the PSOne Classics versions of Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger by setting the date on new downloads to 12/31/1969? This is preventing me from playing my purchased copies on Vita and PS3,” tweeted one unhappy player.

“Here’s something sh*tty,” added another (opens in new tab), who also works as a games journalist. “The PSOne Classics version of Chrono Cross can’t be found on the PS Vita store anymore, only on your download list if you bought before. Runs fine though.

“It’s on the PS3 store, but trying to install and run it tells me it expired? In 1970?? Wtf.”

While initially, some thought the Chrono games may have been sneakily withdrawn to incentivize fans to buy the new remaster instead, others are reporting issues with a number of seemingly unrelated games, including Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy Origins, War of the Lions, and Rune Factory: Ocean, too, so it seems that it’s not just Square Enix games that have been affected.

That’s not all, either. One player on the PS Vita subreddit even reports (opens in new tab) that “all of [their] digital games have expired”, whilst others say they can’t connect to the store anymore (opens in new tab), although – bizarrely – it does still seem to be accessible for some. 

Could it be a temporary glitch whilst Sony prepares its newly refreshed PS Plus subscription service (opens in new tab), or a more sinister sign that the company is getting ready to completely drop support for the retro PS3 and PS Vita systems? Guess we’ll find out when Sony publicly comments on the issue, eh? Watch this space and we’ll update just as soon as we know more.

For more old-school goodness, hit up the best retro consoles (opens in new tab) available today.